Toronto is the capital of the province of Ontario, Canada's most populous province, and with a combined population of about 2.7 million (or almost eight percent of the entire country) is easily the largest city in Canada. It is not, however, the capital of Canada itself—that's Ottawanote . Non-Canadians don't always remember this. To be fair, Torontonians don't always remember this, either.
Among Canadians of a certain mindset, it's known as the place where the win of Canada and the fail of the States do battle for supremacy.
Originally established as York (or 'Muddy York') on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario in 1793, it was quickly designated as the capital of Upper Canada because it was believed to be safer from an American attack than the current capital in Niagara. York was briefly occupied by American troops during the War of 1812 but the Americans withdrew after a few weeks of looting and arson. The city was renamed to Toronto in 1834, coming from the Mohawk word tkaronto ("where there are trees standing in the water"). The county in which the city was situated was still called "York County," however.
In the 1950s, the Ontario provincial government established the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto (aka "Metro Toronto") as the successor to York County. Metro Toronto was responsible for standardizing and sharing certain shared public services between "Old Toronto" and the surrounding boroughs of York, North York, East York, Scarborough and Etobicokenote while allowing each to keep their independent municipal governments. Each one developed and retained its own very distinctive character. In turn they spawned some 140 smaller ethnic and other communities, all likewise fiercely distinctive. To this day Toronto's official nickname is "A City of Neighbourhoods".
That all (almost) changed in 1998, the year Toronto technically became a "mega-city", as the governments of Metro Toronto were fully—and forcibly—merged into a single City of Toronto. To paraphrase Douglas Adams: this action by the provincial government of the time made a lot of people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move. A kind of 'separate but equal' standoff has since been established, wherein everyone retains their unique local identities while also retaining the right to complain endlessly about the central government (very Canadian, this). Claiming you live in Toronto or, say, Scarborough is equally acceptable on official documents or mail.
Today, this fractured-yet-somehow-functional metropolis is at least united in a deeply conscientious civic sensibility, overlaid with an eager cultural striving towards modernity and diversity. Its one overarching ambition, often mocked but deadly serious at heart, is to be acknowledged as a 'world-class city'. Peter Ustinov famously described it as "New York run by the Swiss", which is... not quite what Torontonians had in mind, but they will take it.
Ironically enough Toronto is likely best-known to Americans as a stand-in city of movie and television fame, as filming in Canada is quite a bit cheaper than in the US and comes with some tempting tax incentives.note The City with No Name is often Toronto. Within Canada, meanwhile, it's often derisively known as "the centre of the universe", partially because it's the first city anyone outside of Canada thinks of, and because, well, everybody else in Canada hates Toronto with a fierce and often very creative passion. It's about as close as we ever get to true national unity.
This is largely thanks to a perception, true or false, that Torontonians are oblivious to the country outside of their city; very similar to the American concept of Flyover Country, only there's just the one largest and most diverse population centre hogging the national/cultural spotlight. (Although Vancouver, with its likewise vibrant film industry and influx of pan-Asian wealth, and Montreal, with its European cultural sophistication and renowned universities, both make a strong case for the second. Most Torontonians prefer to ignore all this, however.)
One can easily detect outsiders by their painstaking "Tow-Rawn-Tow". Natives of the city and surrounding area typically drop the last T, and sometimes the first O, so it's "Toronno", "Tronna", or "Tronno"note . Those not from the city originally, of which there are a lot due to the city being home to numerous immigrants, tend to "drop the middle T or O" after spending some time in anyway. Call it slang or perhaps the brain omitting certain syllables it feels aren't necessary to get the word across, those of all backgrounds will have officially made their city their home the moment they naturally call it out in its shortened forms.
Nicknames include T.O. or T-dot (an acronym of Toronto, Ontario), Hogtown (for its large meatpacking industry in the 19th century), The Big Smoke (from its general history as Canada's industrial powerhouse), and "Toronto the Good" (referring to the goody-two-shoes Methodists and other Protestants who made the city a center for uptight Victorian morality). Lately "The 6" (sometimes "The Six" or "The 6ix") has been popularized (although not created) by Toronto hip hop artist Drake. note
In general, modern merged Toronto can be characterized as divided between suburban (the five outer municipalities) and downtown (Old Toronto) mindsets. The suburbs tend to think of the downtown as snooty latte-sipping liberal elites who expect the much larger suburbs to help finance services that mostly benefit downtown (like the streetcar and subway systems); the downtown tend to see the suburbs as Molson-swilling reactionary yahoos who are happy to take advantage of the world-class thing even while clamouring for more public funding cuts. Also, as enablers of the Ford political dynasty... we'll get to that in a moment. The city is further roughly subdivided by the massive Don Valley into west (sleeker, wealthier, most of the landmarks) and east (older, scruffier, most of the cool ethnic neighborhoods) sides.
Meanwhile, the communities within nearby York, Durham, Peel and Halton Regionsnote were and are determined to remain completely independent, while also still effectively serving as outer suburbs of the big city. Most locals divide this larger region by original area codes: 'the 416' refers to Toronto proper, while 'the 905' refers to everyone else.
The whole shebang is referred to by the somewhat vague name Greater Toronto Area (GTA), since very few natives can agree on just where the boundaries are. They roughly wrap around the western end of the lakeshore, and can plausibly stretch as far as Oshawa to the northeast down to Burlington at the southwest. Other terms used are Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) note or the Golden Horseshoenote .
The only true consensus is that the farther away one is from Toronto, the larger the city becomes. For example, a citizen of Mississauga at home is not from Toronto, and he will likely be righteously insulted if you assume such. However that same Mississaugan will claim to be from Toronto while traveling overseas (or more than two provinces away) just to avoid the insane annoyance of having to explain all the above in detail.note
War of 1812 aside, the city came up relatively peacefully through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Like many Great Lakes cities Toronto became a thriving centre of industry, as well acting as becoming a social and cultural hub for the developing nation. Wealthy Victorian-era Torontonians, following the British model, generally owned both an elegant townhouse downtown and a mansion (often of the local red sandstone) on what were then the rural outskirts; many of these still stand. The middle classes, meanwhile, developed the distinctive 'bay-and-gable' architectural style—a bay window on the ground floor and single gable above—that remains unique to the city.
In The '70s, just as the rest of the Great Lakes region was beginning its long, slow decline, Toronto received a huge boost from the provincial government... of Québec, whose newly passed language laws and rampant talk of separatism led to a flood of formerly Montréal-based Anglophones and most of Canada's major businesses making a run for Toronto. This was further increased in the latter half of the decade by changes to the federal Immigration Act, which led to a rise in immigration that continued well into The '80s and The '90s. It was during this period that Toronto overtook Montréal as both Canada's most populous city and its financial capital, most notably with all of Canada's major banks relocating headquarters trom Montreal to Toronto's financial district on Bay Street (which is now considered Canada's answer to Wall Street). Much of the architecture that defines the city to this day, notably the soaring glass-and-steel banking towers, the CN Tower and SkyDome, was constructed around this time.
Toronto today is an exceptionally multicultural city: over half of its population consists of "visible minorities"note , meaning that, within the city, "white" is now a minority by census and already was for several years within North York, the largest, second most populous, and most multicultural district in the megacity. Furthermore, Toronto's multiculturalism is exceptionally non-nominal, as the city has the highest proportion of recent immigrants of any of the world's major cities; Toronto thus harbours many distinct and authentic communities from diverse regions of the globe, making up by last count some 160 language groups. Visitors to Canada take careful note: this sort of thing is unofficially official policy and is always considered a selling point, a source of great civic pride. Also, a lot of frankly awesome restaurants from pretty much any cuisine you can think of.
There are likewise all sorts of cultural festivals, prominent among which are the Caribbean Carnival (Caribbean music and culture, formerly Caribana) and A Taste of The Danforth (authentic Greek street food). Additionally Toronto is a major LGBTQ-friendly centre, hosting the world's largest Gay Pride Parade (the last of three parades, after the Trans March and Dyke March) which closes off a Toronto Pride Month that is widely attended by both locals and tourists. The city hosted World Pride 2014, the first non-European city to do so, which included human rights conferences with delegates from countries around the world.
Theatre and film are other important ways in which the city reaches out for the world stage. Toronto's Theatre District is home to several new or beautifully restored old venues and is considered an important launching point for international productions, most recently the homegrown musical Come from Away. The annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is a high profile event, considered second only to Cannes, that has become a site for major film premieres (including The King's Speech, Argo, and Silver Linings Playbook) and a bellwether for the Oscars. Toronto is also justifiably proud of its vibrant indie music scene which, while not as internationally renowned as Montreal's, has produced the likes of Drake, The Weeknd, K'naan, Snow, the Barenaked Ladies and sometime Bowie collaborator Emm Gryner. Residents still mourn the loss of the famous Sam the Record Man shop, which not only served as a landmark (thanks to its giant neon signs), but served as an incubator for many famous Canadian bands and singers.
Torontonians are much more ambivalent about sports. Certainly they are proud to have a full slate of major league teams, including the National Hockey League's Maple Leafs, Major League Baseball's Blue Jays, the National Basketball Association's Raptors, Major League Soccer's Toronto FC and the Canadian Football League's Argonauts (Argos). Notably, Toronto is currently the only Canadian city to have an NBA or MLB franchise. The city also hosts the NFL's Buffalo Bills for frequent preseason exhibitions and have even flirted with the idea of an NFL team of their own. All this is, of course, only right and proper in a world-class city. The thing is, unless they're winning, it's just not all that interesting. Luckily, most of these teams have seen considerable success (most recently with the Raptors winning the 2019 NBA championship, and the Argos lifting the Grey Cup in 2022 and 2024), but fan support is never really guaranteed...
... Unless you're the one spectacular exception, the Toronto Maple Leafs. A hockey team so loyally beloved that even though they haven't won The Stanley Cup, or even made the Final, since 1967, they still always earn the most by far of any team in the NHL, and are one of two teams every young Canadian prospect dreams of starting for (the other being the hated rival Montreal Canadiens). The Leafs franchise is worth nearly double the next most valuable... every game is a sellout and the waiting list for season tickets is tens of thousands long. Many GTA residents are honestly terrified of what might happen if they ever actually start winning anything againnote . That said, even the most most faithful fans have their limits; on more than one occasion, late-season games with a score heavily tilted in favour of the visiting team have led to fans chanting for the Blue Jays as a form of protest.
The joke is that Toronto has only two seasons: winter and construction. Actually, tourists would be well-advised to note that we also have a summer, that often slides into a long lingering autumn. The GTA is much further south than many American states, meaning the climate can best be compared to Chicago, not the North Pole.* If you are coming up between May and August dressed for the igloos, you will not be a happy camper.
As for the construction... well, yes, because of potentially heavy snowfallnote Toronto has to concentrate most building and all its road work in the summer months. That said, construction happens all year round in Toronto, which is something Torontonians will likely never stop complaining about. Add in the fact that Southern Ontario highways are some of the busiest in the world; the GTA sprawls over many kilometres, and is rapidly outgrowing its aging transportation infrastructure, without any real consensus on what to do about it. The main east-west route through the region, Highway 401, is by most measures the busiest highway in the world, with all eighteen lanes jammed for miles at rush hour. The Gardiner Expressway, which runs through the southern portion of Toronto near the lake, is similarly gridlocked. Meanwhile Toronto's north-south crosstown artery, the Don Valley Parkway—initially intended to relieve congestion on the city streets—has long been affectionately dubbed the Don Valley Parking Lot. When construction starts forcing lane closures, things get gnarled very quickly. There were plans for a full grid of municipal expressways, which likely would have taken some of the pressure off. However, the residents of the vibrant neighbourhoods that would have been bulldozed to put them in decided they were quite happy where they were. A campaign, notably including urbanist Jane Jacobs (who had immigrated to Toronto in the 1960s), successfully persuaded the Metro and Ontario governments to put a halt to expressway construction. Adding to this, construction projects in Toronto are famous for their Development Hell, with the Line 5 Eglinton light rail being delayed for over two decades. At least once a year, the provincial transit agency Metrolinx would announce a completion date...until late 2022, when Metrolinx announced they had no idea when it would open. Understandably, by 2023, most Torontonians have decided to never believe these announcements until they see the completion happen.
On the plus side, the GTA's existing transit network has some good qualities: anchored by the red-and-white subways, streetcars and buses of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) and the green-and-white provincial GOnote Transit regional rail and intercity buses.
